Painted lady of the bird world

AN article by Jim Fox in the current issue of BirdWatch Ireland’s magazine Wings, brings to mind a self-effacing bird which we have all but forgotten.

The common quail, a dumpy little summer visitor of wheat-fields and grasslands, is scarcer even than the corncrake or the partridge.

Not much bigger than a blackbird, it’s a member of the pheasant family and a relative of the domestic chicken, the most successful bird of all time which outnumbers humans by four to one.